It's the summer of 2002, the wacky inflatable arm waving tube men dance carefree in the wind outside a petrol station in the middle of nowhere. My brother and I are on our way to the last family holiday our parents would take us on. We'll see incredible things: giraffes a few meters from our front door, a family of hippos bathing in the river. We'll learn that some waterfowl are absolutely not to be trifled with. We'll walk further than our little legs are able to carry us and we'll fall asleep right after we've had our ice cream. Carefree.

It's the summer of 2023, and the wacky inflatable arm waving tube men are preparing for war. Perhaps not the wacky inflatable arm waving tube men themselves, but certainly some sort of noodly, wacky physics-based descendant. Some temporal warp allows for battles between members of this alien civilization at various points that parallel our own human development. Red neanderthalic cavemen are mowed down by blue Napoleonic squares, who are in turn sent to wacky inflatable arm waving tube man hell by a red grim reaper in the next round. My brother and I further this intractable conflict in endless multiplayer battles, each hoping to prove as untrifleable-with as those waterfowl decades ago. There is no ice cream and we are the furthest we could be from carefree.

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is now available on PC, Xbox, PS4, and Nintendo Switch.